למען תזכרו ועשיתם

One of the things that I am really proud of is I have a reputation for taking on projects that are sort of out of the box.

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The woman who asked me to take on the kittle project realized part of the way through our initial meeting that perhaps I might be able to help out with some projects for her son's upcoming bar mitzvah.

The bar-mitzvah boy's grandfather died right around the time the boy was born. The bar-mitzvah boy was named for this grandfather. My client and her husband wondered if I could turn somehow add something of Grandpa's tallit to the tallit they had already purchased.

Clearly it is easier to integrate a treasured textile if that textile is part of the design process from the beginning. Never the less I was ready to think about how to think about this problem.

The coloring of the new tallit is intense, a midnight blue and peacock green. There was also the issue of how to share bits of the tallit with the other 8 grandchildren. I am going to table the issue of the other grandchildren for the moment, just as this family and I had to.

I did think that if I dyed some of the strands of tzitzit from grandpa's tallit to a nice rich color, I could couch it onto the pinot, the corner pieces.

Grandpa's tallit was clearly worn while sitting next to a bored child at synagogue.

There were several extra knots enthusiastically added to the ritual knots and wraps. I untied both the knots added by the bored child as well as the regulation knots and wraps. It took a while.

Then it was time to dye the tzitzit. I put a bit of dye into a plastic bag, added some water and then the tzitzit.

I then mushed the diluted dye around the tzitzit untl the color was evenly distributed.

Then I let the tzitzit dry for twenty four hours.That will make the color fairly permanent.

The next day I heat set the color on the tzitzit. In layman's terms, i put the tzitzit between the folds of a cotton napkin and ironed the napkin encased tzitzit for several minutes. The tzitzit were a crumpled mess.

I then pulled each strand under the sole plate of the iron, and by then they were straight. For good measure I repeated the pulling under the iron process again . It was fun and also REALLY made sure that the color was set.

Next, I couched the threads around the satin stitching at the edge of each corner piece.

It's a subtle addition.Here you can see the corner piece on the right with the couching and the one on the left without the stitching.

These photos are really enlarged. The effect in real life is really subtle. There are enough bits of the tallit that all of the grandchildren can have a bit of it.

I could write a long and sentimental paragraph about how the whole point of the tzitzit is to help us remember as we daven and how the one strand of the tzitzit from Grandpa's tallit will help his namesake born just as Grandpa was dying remember the man he was named for and how much he was loved by his family, but I will leave the writing of that paragraph to someone else.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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